Leaving the nest isn’t easy – not even when you’re moving as a family.
Since we left my childhood home, I’ve been questioning the concept of ‘home’. How do I make myself feel at home? Where is home? Is home even a place? Does home exist? Of course, having a place to call your own can’t always be the same as having a place to call home, right? What is the reason for our (my?) obsession with finding ‘home’?
Home is safety. And family. And pets. And guitars. And wood floors. And high ceilings. And supper at the dinner table. And summer evenings on the porch. And watching thunderstorms in August. And growing up. And doing chores.
Alright, some of those points are certainly biased, but I can’t help it; I grew up with pets, and guitars, and wood floors, and high ceilings, and had supper as a family, and spent my summer evenings on the porch and wondered at the marvels of a thunderstorm.
I grew up sure that I knew where home was, what it was. I learnt that pretending to run away from home was the ultimate trick to get over an argument with my twin sister. I thought I’d always have that certitude. It was simple: home is where you live.
Shattered was that concept when we left the house that had belonged to my great-grandparents. At 17, I had to build a new idea of where home was. Because the new place? It didn’t feel like home. The old house was still home to me. With time, my definition broadened. Home, to me, became a reference to my town more than my house.
That ideology changed when, at 18, I set aside my small town roots to go to school in the city. When I first saw the apartment my older sister had found for us, I was bringing in my first load of boxes. “I hate this place!” I yelled at her, crying. An apartment couldn’t be home to me. Especially not when it was an hour away from my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, my pets, and my life (so it seemed).
But hey, you know what? I’m pretty used to that apartment now, and I will be disappointed when we leave our Montreal ‘home’. (Again, I’m biased here; the apartment has wood floors and high ceilings).
Still, I can’t quite talk about home when referring to the city; instead, I think about it as ‘home’, as a temporary replacement for a real home, since I spend most of my time in and around my hometown anyway.
That’s the problem though; everything is temporary. It’s difficult to feel secure about anything, to be absolutely sure that this place or that place is home, the same way I did as a child. If time changes everything, perception of time changes a lot as well. Childhood ignorance certainly is bliss.
But then, the young adult kicks in. Home must exist. If it isn’t a physical location, what is home then? Is it a feeling? A state of mind? A person who makes you feel at home? Alright, let me try again.
Home is when you feel like you’re right where you belong. When you’re comfortable kicking off your shoes and slipping into pajamas as soon as you get back from school or from work. When you feel like you can breathe again. When you’re with someone who makes you feel like everything is okay. When you feel safe.
Maybe home is a utopian concept. Maybe I just haven’t figured enough out yet. Maybe I’ll never be 100% convinced. What I do know for now anyway, is that the mountains the forest, and the lake are a few meters away, the ceiling fans is humming a familiar rhythm, the house is clean, there’s food in the fridge, there are words on this page that have been bursting to be written for the longest time, there’s a special someone sleeping in the next room, and there’s a husky asleep on the couch beside me. Whether or not it’s home, it sure feels like a good place to be.
katherine willcocks 